


Memory of a Dream

by Valkyrie_of_Eyre



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Babies, Children, M/M, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:35:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22567912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valkyrie_of_Eyre/pseuds/Valkyrie_of_Eyre
Summary: Season 6 Episode 5 inspired mini fic where Patrick works through feelings about whether he wants children.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer & David Rose, Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 12
Kudos: 104





	Memory of a Dream

Patrick woke to the bright cheerfulness of summer morning light. He blinked his eyes once, twice. The residue of a dream left smudges of pale pastels on his memoy, just out of reach. Patrick blinked again, trying to sharpen the image. 

While the impression of the dream danced out of focus, a strong feeling, something powerful, pressed against his insides like an inflated red balloon. Patrick blinked again, harder, trying to capture the film reel, fill in the colors, grasp the words to the melody beating tantalizingly indistinct against his brain. 

Patrick’s agitation nudged David out of sleep just enough for David to reach out and wrap his hand around Patrick’s. 

David. The sleepy pressure eased Patrick back into a feeling of snug warmth. David’s hand in his was solid, smooth, right. 

Patrick thought about his life a year before, two years before. The unease. How he had felt like an arrow stretched on a bow. Always in tension, never released, unsure where to aim other than straight ahead, never finding his target 

The memory of the helplessness of that feeling shallowed his breath, and Patrick forced himself to focus on David’s hand in his. Patrick exhaled. David. This was right. Even now, even after a year of knowing and loving and respecting David, the feeling of relief he had with David bowled him over. 

Patrick had found his person. The knowledge of this grew out of his being, not his consciousness. It had never felt like a choice, although he would have made the choice if it had been presented as an option. Like a patron at a movie, Patrick had watched his subconscious make decisions for him, say things, do things at which his conscious brain would have balked. Patrick Brewer was not someone who went into business with strangers, but Patrick watched helplessly as his feet traversed the path to David’s shop door over and over again. 

Smiling at the memory of those earliest days, Patrick gently tucked David’s hand back at David’s side. Seeing David in his bed cleared his mind and made Patrick breathe freely again. On a final deep breath, Patrick swung into his morning activities, pausing his introspective brain as he switched to his efficiency setting.

When Patrick straightened the applesauce jars at Rose Apothecary, he startled as his brain attempted to trundle set pieces in from his dream the night before. Quirking his head, Patrick stared into the middle distance. Here in the afternoon, he had almost forgotten that dream, forgotten that he had tried and failed to chase it. Patrick thought for another moment, but then shook his head and let it go. The dream was as indistinct as watercolors in the rain, and it did not feel important anymore.

Patrick chose to walk to baseball practice after Rose Apothecary closed that afternoon. The ball fields were only a few blocks away and the weather was beautiful. Patrick was stepping around a car parked outside Bob’s Garage when he was staggered by an image from his dream slamming into the back of his retinas. 

The image was of a baby. All sweet skin, round blue eyes, small pink lips, red hair in a whorl on the top of her head. The baby’s tiny hand curled around Patrick’s finger, and her tears mingled with those of the man holding her. 

Patrick was crying on the street, too. The red balloon from the dream was expanding and filling his chest, and he felt like he couldn’t breathe. Patrick doubled over, bracing one hand against the side of the stranger’s silver sedan, a car seat just visible through the window. 

The baby from the dream had been perfect. He could feel an echo of deep love for her. But nestled atop that love was a diaphanous black blanket of unease. Pain. Resentment. Not against the baby, but at his life. In the dream he felt trapped under a wave while those around him splashed in the surf above him, waving to him where he lay pressed under the water, never noticing he was drowning. Never noticing that he could not feel the sun from where he lay imprisoned in the sea. Salt water everywhere.

The sun blazed out from behind a cumulus cloud that bedecked the summer afternoon sky. The shock of it pulled a gasping breath out of Patrick, and he straightened. Stepping away from the car, he allowed himself to take gulp after swallow after breath of air, until he felt in control. And then, slowly, Patrick walked back over to the car and looked in the window again.

The car seat was empty, gray, indistinct. Patrick stepped away and surveyed the whole vehicle. He imagined it was his. He imagined it was his car seat inside, and that he had a baby, and that he placed his baby in that car seat every day. 

Patrick examined his heart. Was it responding to this? Was that something he wanted? Patrick stood and listened and listened and waited and looked. But the car seat was still just a car seat. A silhouette from someone else’s life. 

He shook his limbs loose, forcing his muscles to relax. Patrick wiped his eyes and straightened his clothes. Then he looked at the car seat again. It looked like a piece of equipment, not a promise. Patrick continued on to baseball practice. 

At the park, Patrick’s attention was caught by two kids tossing a baseball on a patch of grass. These were real kids, a real test, not just an empty car seat. Patrick felt a sense of happiness to see kids play baseball. He did not think he felt anything more specific. 

“Those are your kids,” he practiced. He felt… fine? The feeling was measured. He practiced it again. “Your kids throw a ball around while you’re at practice. Then you all go home and take showers and prepare lunches for school and fight about electronics and tv time.”

It felt familiar, like a home video from his childhood. It was nice. It was fine.

And then Patrick imagined David walking in the door, and the emotion switched from low resolution to high relief. 

Patrick looked back at the kids throwing the baseball. He could hear their young voices goading each other, teasing, echoing the sounds of his own past. Patrick found that he was content to watch the cycle of childhood from the sideline. He wondered if he might like to coach kids one day. He thought that could be nice. And yet, it was when he imagined David’s face in the stands that Patrick smiled.


End file.
